


Alternate Histories

by midnightofthesoul



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, F/M, Friendship, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:51:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4089358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnightofthesoul/pseuds/midnightofthesoul
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"So let me get this straight, you've repeated the last eight months of your life, ten times?"</p><p>What if Felicity got caught in a second wave explosion from the particle accelerator in Central City between seasons 2 and 3? </p><p>This is a story of about how, a life got twist-turned upside down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alternate Histories

* * *

PROLOGUE

* * *

 

A high pitched squealing sound coupled with the sensation of an ice pick drilling into her skull are what greet Felicity upon waking. It’s the same thing, every time. Overwhelming pain followed by a rush of adrenaline and a strange sense of euphoria.

Yes, alternating universes can have that effect on a person.

 _Is it an alternate universe though?_ Felicity lapses into what has become a running debate with herself over the years. _What constitutes an alternate universe? Or maybe it’s time resetting itself?_ She halts the train of thought as she tries to quash the overwhelming frustration and despair that sweep over her.

She failed. Again.

And now she has to go through the last eight months all over again. For the… eleventh time. A rush of curse words sprint through her mind as she silently fumes over being thrown back in time yet again.

_I am so tired. Deep in the marrow of my bones exhausted. I don’t think I can do this again._

Slowly and ever so carefully, she calms herself to stave off the tears that prick her eyes. She inhales through her nose and exhales out of her mouth. Eyes shut, she assesses her surroundings, trying not to reveal to anyone present that she is awake. Her fingers uncurl onto soft fabric, pressing lightly to discover that she is most likely on a couch or bed. The scent of a home cooked meal and a touch of cologne and flowers lead Felicity to believe she is in one specific place: John Diggle’s home.

 _Perfect_.

Also, this is new. She typically resets to the Arrowcave. Actually, she always resets to the Arrowcave. Of the last ten cycles, John was present for over half of her resets, making the transition infinitely easier.

But being in his home? Now this is tricky. What if it’s Lyla that she first encounters? What if it’s the both of them? What if they’re hosting a dinner and…

_Stop. Deep breath. First step: wake up. Stick to the plan._

And so she does. Her eyes flutter open and she is met with soft golden light and blurry surroundings. Her glasses must have been removed. She licks her lip only to discover it is split, hissing in pain as she assesses the feeling of having gone seven rounds with a bulldozer and losing. Her entire body hurts. The last time she woke up like this, she’d fallen six stories and landed in a dumpster. That was most certainly unpleasant.

Biting back a groan, Felicity pulls herself upright and takes in her surroundings. She’s in the living room, the television is on, muted but on the news. Without her glasses she cannot read the words scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Glancing at the table, she spots her glasses and reaches for them, sliding them on her face with a sigh of contentment.

“Good, you’re awake,” John says as he carries a cup of something hot into the room. “You’ve been out for over two hours. I was debating with myself if I should take you to the hospital.”

“Not. Definitely not,” Felicity croaks, voice rough from disuse. “What happened to me?”

A flash frown crosses his features as he hands her the mug. “You don’t remember?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Felicity finds that playing the head trauma card saves her during the first couple weeks whenever she makes a slip up. It’s hard to remember the finite changes that occur eight months in the past.

“You and I were in the van, trying to divert Fontela while Oliver and Roy took out Fontela’s home base across town. One of Fontela’s guys hopped on top of the van, punched through the windshield and smacked your head against the window. You were out cold. I think he may have been one of the few left with Mirakuru in his system.”

“Then why do you look fine?”

“Because I hit the breaks, he flew off, then I ran him over with the van… twice,” John replies, looking somewhat smug. “I brought you here because it was closer.”

“But why does my entire body hurt?”

“I think that’s because you were sparring with Roy earlier?” Digg states, his brows furrowing. “You don’t remember this morning either?”

Felicity frowns. This isn’t good. She’s never been reset in the middle of something like this. Sparring? Out in the field? Going to Digg’s as opposed to the Arrowcave? She glances at the screen and confirms that it is in fact, eight months earlier from when she was last conscious. For a quick moment, she wonders if perhaps everything else was a dream and maybe it wasn’t real.

Without hesitating she pulls up the sleeve of her sweater and finds the ten small, multicolored lines tattooed onto the inside of her wrist. Her touchstone — her way of grounding herself when time and her surroundings are constantly in flux.

Sadly this isn’t a dream and neither were the last ten evolutions.

“Felicity? Are you sure we shouldn’t —“

She reaches out and touches his hand briefly, shaking her head.  Sucking in a breath, she leans back against the couch, tucking her feet beneath her. Feeling his scrutiny, she looks up and offers a weak smile.

“I need to tell you something. You’re not going to believe me at first, but just remember, I can prove it to you when I’m done.”

Digg tenses, sitting straighter as she fixes him with a serious expression, “Should we wait for Oliver?”

Shaking her head, Felicity sighs. “No. I’ve tried explaining it to him in the past and typically it just causes a lot of confusion and frustration for all parties involved. It’s better if he doesn’t know.”

John’s head falls to the side, measuring her words, uncertain if he’s comfortable keeping something from Oliver.

“John, I wouldn’t ask this of you if it weren’t important. I _need_ you to know… to be aware of what’s going on,” her voice is low and careful. She tries to cover her desperation, but for her, every moment counts and this is one of the most important.

“If I don’t have your support…” she swallows thickly, eyes losing focus, before looking up at him again. “If I don’t have your support, this will be very difficult for me.”

After countless moments, John nods, though the tension remains. “You have my support, you’ll always have it. I’m just not sure I feel comfortable in keeping something from Oliver.”

“He does it to us all the time.”

“For our protection.”

“That is debatable,” she shoots back, causing his lips to thin in agreement.

“You have my word,” John nods as he eases up slightly, settling in his seat. “Lyla will be home soon. And Oliver and Roy are finishing up with the police now, so you don’t have much time.”

Felicity nods, taking a sip of the tea John brewed. “Once again, I’m reminding you to keep your mind open, and know that I have proof when I finish explaining this to you.”

“Felicity…”

“I’ve repeated the last eight months of my life ten times. This is the eleventh cycle,” the words burst forth like kids rushing through the doors for recess. The look on John’s face is utter confusion. “Before you think this is because I hit my head, let me stop you right there. It isn’t. Just before I woke up, I was hanging off the ledge of a building thirty-three stories in the air. I’d finally figured out the last piece of the puzzle, but before I could do anything… boom. I got jolted back eight months and have to do the same thing all over again.”

“This is absolutely —“

“Crazy? Oh I know. I know very well how crazy it is. But you know what’s crazier? Is having to do the same thing ten times! TEN. Every time I wake up, I have to go through the same thing, every time I have to prove it to you or once it was Lyla, another it was Sara… Every time I have to deal with Oliver and whatever is going on between us. And then… and then the next eight months of absolute insanity occur. Because if you think the Undertaking or Slade was a nightmare, let me tell you —“

“Slow down. Just. Slow. Down,” John shoots up from his seat and starts pacing. “But you’ve been on my couch since we got back.”

“Were you with me the whole time?”

“Well no,” John shakes his head, stopping as he crosses his arms.

“Did I have a tattoo on my wrist yesterday? I have plenty of new scars to show you too if you’d like to see,” Felicity stands up and lifts her sweater, revealing a jagged line on her abdomen that was more than just a scar. “I got that one working for ARGUS. And I got this one —“ she pulls up the sleeve of her shirt again, “when I was in Gotham, which is an entirely different story all together.”

John places his hands on her shoulders, clearly struggling with this knowledge. “You need to start from the beginning. How did this happen?”

Felicity freezes, trying to figure out how much she can reveal, which is easily one of the hardest parts of her life now.

“Uhhhh how long has Slade been on Lian Yu?”

“Two months.”

“Has Barry woken up yet?”

“Barry? Barry Allen? Yes.”

“Huh… that’s new. Okay... The first time this ever happened…” Felicity pauses self-editing a bit, “basically I went to visit Barry and ran into his friends Cisco and Caitlin. They took me to meet their boss at S.T.A.R. Labs, Dr. Harrison Wells. While I was there helping him with one of his analytic systems, we somehow detonated a second shock wave from the particle accelerator. Everything was fine, or so I thought. Right around eight months later, time got reset and I ended up in the middle of the summer of this year, trying to figure out what happened.”

“So that’s what initially set this off? Some freak accident in Central City? That’s why you’ve been repeating this period over and over again?”

“Pretty much.”

“Okay,” John nods, taking a seat again.

“Okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

“Just like that?” Felicity quirks her eyebrows in disbelief. She had an entire speech planned. “No need for proof? No super meta conversation about existentialism? Not even a dip into quantum mechanics, which I’m now earning a doctorate in? I’ve even found a book for you that explains everything from String Theory to all the advances Richard Feyman made, you tend to get curious about a month from now.”

“Right now, you telling me all this is enough,” John shakes his head. “In this world, Barry woke up a couple weeks ago. Since then, he’s been trying to adjust to everything, including the whole super speed, always hungry, quick healing thing. We saw him last week. This isn’t so strange, all things considered.”

“Did Oliver shoot him with an arrow to prove the quick healing?” Felicity makes a squinty face of displeasure.

“How’d you know?”

“Just because the universes change, doesn’t mean the people do,” Felicity replies with an air of wisdom and sadness. John catches this, but makes no mention of it. Instead he leans forward looking at her more closely. She bears his scrutiny in silence, wondering what differences his sees.

“So you age and everything? You don’t look much different. Just tired, which is appropriate.”

“Yeah I’m… thirty-one now. Which is somewhat of a sore point for me. I keep changing and aging and everyone else gets to stay the same which is both wonderful and —“

“Frustrating? I can imagine.” John nods, growing pensive. “Are you like Barry? Do you have any special skills?”

“You mean more than my genius level intellect and ability to create a sexual innuendo out of pretty much anything?” Felicity shrugs. “Not really. I pick up things quickly, but I always have. Over the years I’ve become pretty adept at self-defense. In about a week I’ll have a tranquilizer gun created so that I can arm myself when I go out in the field.”

“You go in the field?”

“Remember that whole part where I said I got hurt working for ARGUS? That was four years ago. I definitely go out in the field now. With my short time-window in which to work, I don’t have the means or time to convince everyone to help me. Most of the time, I do what I need to do by myself with occasional help from you or Sara.”

“But not Oliver.” It’s not a question, just a reiteration from before.

“I tried that a couple times. It always blew up in my face spectacularly. His near pathologic need to be in control and take the blame for everything is more of a hindrance than anything else. I like to keep him out of the loop as much as possible. Makes my life much easier.”

“Hmmm,” John slides back, taking it all in. As he does so, Felicity continues to drink her tea, gently prodding the treated wound on her head. She detects merely a set of butterfly bandages covering a lumpy bruise. _Delightful_. 

“So in the past ten cycles, is there ever a trend to what happens? Like… I always chose the red wire, or Oliver always chooses death…”

Trying not to flinch at the implication, Felicity bites her lip in contemplation, “Three things always occur: someone close to me always dies, Oliver always takes a chance at being with me, and Malcolm Merlyn is evil incarnate. Oh and I always fail.”

“Something tells me the Malcolm conversation is for another day. What makes you say you always fail?”

“Well, I’m still doing this, so it must mean that I still haven’t gotten something right.”

“And Oliver?”

“One cycle we spent the whole time going back and forth and we finally got together in the end and I thought that was what was missing,” she sighs, thinking about that moment where Oliver was so happy and they drove off into the sunset. “But then I reset into Cycle Four and no… Oliver’s happiness has nothing to do with me getting to the correct universe or… just moving on to month nine. The second time we got together…” Felicity shakes her head, clamping her mouth shut. It’s been almost four years and it’s still too hard to think about that unmitigated disaster.

“Didn’t work out?”

“There’s a very valid reason why we’ve never gotten back together since then, I assure you. Usually I just shut it down in the very beginning and encourage him to rekindle things with Laurel. It tends to work pretty well.”

John nods knowingly, giving her a sad look. “I’m sorry it doesn’t work out for you two. I think you could make each other happy.”

“I used to think that too, but then I’ve built a solid friendship with him the last couple times and I honestly find it more rewarding. Not having my heart on the line makes our interactions much less angst-ridden,” she rises from the couch and stretches, ignoring the sting of sore muscles and the throbbing in her head.

“You said there was also a way for you to prove it to me,” John stands as well, facing her. “I don’t really need the proof because I believe you, but out of curiosity, what is it?”

Felicity grins, knowing that John always wants that last shred of certainty so he can feel fully confident. “There _is_ one thing that happened during the blast, not a skill, per se… more like an ability to transmit our shared memories through touch. I can't control which ones surface, though. I typically have to maintain contact for several seconds, which is why I’m not much of a touchy-feely person anymore, but… here, give me your hand and close your eyes.”

He hesitates for a moment, uncertain, and then places his hand in her upturned palm. Closing her eyes as well, she covers his hand with hers and takes a deep breath. Seconds pass in silence as she allows the heat of his palm and the sense of John slowly pulling the memories to the surface like tethers.

Then there’s a flash of light followed by a rush of static sound:

_Felicity sits at her computer in the Arrowcave. Digg, Sara, and Oliver sword fight in the background as Roy moves up and down the salmon ladder._

_John and Felicity dressed to the nines, walking down a corridor at Queen Consolidated as a tall man with dark brown hair grins at them, holding up a device on his wrist and raising his eyebrows in excitement._

_Sitting at Big Belly Burger with Sara, Oliver, Lyla, Roy and Laurel, everyone is laughing and Felicity’s face is red as a tomato._

_Lyla and John, in wedding attire, dancing slowly and completely in their own world._

_A look of desperation and anger on John’s face as Felicity yells at him, pushing him away as she kneels in front of an enormous bomb, preparing to diffuse it._

_Complete shock as Barry flashes past them, returning seconds later with fries and a coke._

_Amusement as John watches Oliver, dressed in Arrow gear, reaches down and grabs her hand, kissing her wrist affectionately —_

The link is broken suddenly by Felicity. She doesn’t like the ones with Oliver. Doesn’t like to remember them, doesn’t like for John to seen them. John stands in front of her, palm still raised and looking dazed.

“Wow.”

“I know,” Felicity states as she steps around him, needing space. “So… I need to know this now… I’m going to need help. I’m 95% sure I know how to break the cycle, but I can’t do it alone.”

John crosses his arms, waiting for her request.

“Can I count on you?”

Without hesitation he nods. “What’s the plan?”

.::.

If only they'd known that Oliver could hear them the entire time...

**Author's Note:**

> If you're here for Oliver/Felicity smut, then this isn't your story. If you're here for badass Felicity, lady friendships, and Oliver learning how to be a team player, then this is for you. Slow burn? Maaaybe. *winkface*.
> 
> Thanks for reading. Let me know if you have any points of confusion.


End file.
